Scarface vs. The Zombie Invasion!!!

Oye me, Chico, more Zombie Fun!!!

A little something to hold us zombie fans over till World War Z comes out. Hey Chico, get the Yayo!

Would you face Traffic Hell for a game session?

Even though my life has become much busier due to previously mentioned things happening at work, our gaming group has managed to become a once weekly affair. One week I’m doing Knights of the Old Republic, and the next week Ben does his AD&D campaign (the one where we don’t all have to run elves). I haven’t done gaming on a weekly basis since I was a teenager, so it’s kind of a trip. I think all this solid, quality gaming is partly to blame for my decline of online participation in the gamer community, but I’ll talk about that in a separate post.

I thought I would be taking a summer break from gaming, as Andy and the wife are renting out the back place to a young guy from Spain for the time being (who Andy is trying to get interested in gaming so he’ll host us out there, if I am not mistaken). But Dan-Dan the Power Game Man, with the big palace up in Northern Bel Air off Mulholland, has stepped up to host for the time being despite a brand new baby in the house (his, he thinks).

It has been rough going for me so far, because as anybody in So Cal knows, the 405 Freeway (the gateway from West LA to the Valley) is a tough drive in the late afternoon. And despite a couple of better alternatives, it is the way I have foolishly tried to go to get to Dan’s (the Mulholland offramp has been closed, meaning having to drive down to Van Nuys, get off, and go back up Sepulveda).

Next week they are closing the 405 between West LA and Ventura Blvd. They are demolishing the Mulholland overpass or something. What this unheard of act means is that traffic is going to be a living nightmare for those willing to take to local freeways during his apocalyptic event. Sure, there is Sepulveda, and the few winding roads that go up into Northern Santa Monica and the Bel Air area, but those are more likely than not going to be a car nightmare.

For somebody like me who doesn’t like to drive unless it's long road trips up uncrowded Interstates, it was a given there would be no game next week, at least at Dan’s. But how about you? Have you ever gone into what you knew would be horrid traffic to get to a game session (maybe you were DM and didn’t want to disappoint those who showed up)? Would you try to get to the Dan situation I described for a game? I mean, I’m loving gaming lately, but LA traffic is bad enough without something insane like a 405 closure. I’d show up so frazzled I’d end up getting drunk and having to crash on the couch with Dan’s dogs.

BILBO!

Behold, Bilbo Baggins (with his dwarvish "guests" in the background) in all his tea-chugging, bread and cheese horking glory!

Oh yeah, that's actor Martin Freeman (Love, Actually) as the would be burgler. Nice! This movie can't come soon enough for me.

This is Ghostly Aging

OK, the commercial is about how scary the King Kong ride is, but it is indeed the best depiction of what ghostly aging looks like. You're very young thief character goes from having his life in front of him to being ready for the old adventurer's home (hell) in seconds flat.

Players are more afraid of losing levels from undead, but you gotta admit that in it's own way, ghostly aging takes away a lot of your life. Almost all of it in this poor kid's case.

D&D and the Fuzz just don't mix

Hi-lar-ious clip from the Reno 911 cops getting called to a dispute at a Dungeons and Dragons session, featuring the ever awesome geek comedian Patton Oswalt. Note how his Boots of Escaping are no match for the policeman's bullet of ass-penetration.

How many Failsauce gamers have you played with who you would like to have seen this happen too? About a thousand, that's how many.

Avengers Assemble!

This promo poster art for next year's Avengers film is our first real indication of what the heroes involved will look like together. Interesting to note (to me anyway) how out of place the dude from Hurt Locker looks as a maskless Hawkeye the Archer. We have to keep in mind this is the Ultimates version of The Avengers (although that Hawkeye wore special glasses because they strangly had him be near sighted in that version).

Time will tell, but right now it seems unreal that I am actually going to get such a huge Marvel team-up in a live action film in my lifetime, and that it might actually not suck (it could be stupid, but it will be fun for sure). Now, where the hell is my Justice League film, true believers?

Keep on Truckin' (more or less)

Wow, more than two weeks without a post! What the hell is going on around here? Actually, one big thing that is going on to sap up my “Funny time” is a big promotion at work. Career making. So to earn that nice extra chunk of change and the occasional invite to a big Hollywood client party now and again, I need to spend more time actually doing something productive on the computer, instead of all this frivolous, asinine game stuff that is unrelated to my actual playing of the games.

Also, with my long AD&D campaign now well over, I’m slightly less inspired to post about gaming stuff in general. Sure, I’m doing KOTOR and want to do Call of Cthulhu and more Champions in the future (and leave us not forget my current obsession Runequest) All this, combined maybe with my disappointment at how many less than fulfilling gaming experiences I’ve had outside my own group in the last couple of years (those great OD&D session at local events being an exception), in person and online, will keep me from posting very often for the foreseeable future. A lot of the negative crap I read online reminds me of those early Aero Hobbies days I had as a young teen at the local game shop. Exposure to a lot of bitter, unhappy people who seem to make up a huge portion of gamers (and maybe pop culture geeks in general). I keep getting sucked into stupid arguments with people online that I probably wouldn’t even acknowledge if I met them in real life. I gotta cut back on that for sure. Treat these people online who get on my nerves much like I do fucked-up shitty drivers when on the road. Think of them not as people, but as nothing more than blips in a video game comin’ atcha.

In gaming, I need to focus more on the actual gaming. Right now I’ve been playing every other week in Big Ben’s evil campaign, where I’m running a monk (the one non-evil character). That has been fun to a large degree because my guy came along after the first game, and this lot of evil punks were practically at each other’s throats. So my lawful neutral guy has brought some sense of order to the party.

In my game every other week, I’ve been doing the KOTOR thing and it’s a success so far. It’s based on the campaign I put together for the infamous Star Wars group I ran for a bit the other year. But the difference this time is I know these players, they are all pretty cool, and not one of them is even that much of a fan of Star Wars movies, which is a big plus for me. I’m trying to run anything but a Star Wars film with this. I don’t think the other group necessarily appreciated a little bit of hard sci fi and rated R situations being injected into their precious George Lucas setting. Yeah, it’s fun, with some great characters. The players are loving all the options you get for character building. I more or less dig the system (for Sci Fi…I don’t know how they could have called this game engine “D&D” at any point), and both Big Ben and Paul have PDF’s of the SW Core rules, and seem to know the system already better than I do.

For more changes on the game front, we are for the foreseeable future pretty much losing Andy’s place to play in after almost three years of playing there. But luckily, despite his wife just having a baby recently, Dan the Power Game Man has managed to sweet talk the new mom into letting the gang come over to play on weeknights there. Mulholland on a weeknight is a bit of a pain to get to from the West Side, but it’s good to know we still have a location.

So the games continue. My online presence, well, may be a bit less for awhile. I’ll still check in to post here and there when inspired, or pissed off by one of my players, or any possible number of things that get my goat or gets me excited (yay)in the grand scheme of gaming. I’ve really lost my taste now for trying to get involved in any kind of other groups outside the great gang of people I have now for our regular thing. Actually gaming on a regular basis. Seemed a far off dream around three years ago. I’m going to focus on keeping that healthy for as long as I can. For my gaming life right now, it feels like home.